Hardback

75 pledges

Collectable

8 pledges

Dedicated

4 pledges

Collectable signed and dedicated hardback, with secret (possibly highly amusing but generally extremely fabulous) hand-written note in margin, for you to find. This will make your copy worth about £1 billion pounds one day. If inflation gets really bad

Instead, this is a book about us.
You and me. The parents, flailing in the Middle Years, when our babies have grown up and everything has gone a bit...tits down.

Because trust me, my knackered friend. It WILL.
You will swear it won’t.
But it will.
So it’s best to be prepared, or at the very least hold a copy of this book as a word-raft, to keep you afloat.

This is the book I wish someone had written for me
years ago. It would have saved me a LOT of stress,
therapy and vodka bills, so cheers for that.

I wish someone had told me that all the things I’ve lived through in these Middle Years of family life are
completely normal, I’m not a monumental fuck-up of a human being and I will still be able to order a
Jaegerbomb after the age of 40, without being escorted out by social services.

I wish someone had told me about the sadness I’d feel
when my children stop needing me so much. Or talking
to me, ever.
I wish I’d known how my mind would change as my
kids grew up – and what to do about it.
I wish someone had told me what it’s really like to get
divorced, to not live with your children every day any
more, and how to handle the epic fall-out better.

I wish someone had told me that it would all get much
better, and that I was NOT a complete failure as a
mother.

I wrote this book for you, because one day a few years
ago, deep in the crusty elbow-skin of midlife, listening
to my children’s doors slamming and watching my sex
appeal turn into a Blue Peter crisis fund, I thought…

Excuse me, but WHAT THE HECK IS THIS??

Who are these moody zit-incubators in my house,
Facetiming each other at dinner and staying up later
than me?
Who keeps nicking my eye-liner?
Why am I saying all the things to my children that I
hated my mum saying to me?
Why can’t I remember any GCSE maths?
Why is nothing even vaguely as I expected it would be
at this stage in my life?
Why am I suddenly scared of lifts? In fact, why am I suddenly
scared of loads of things I used to be perfectly OK about? Am I
going mad?

Why did nobody come clean and warn me that it gets
harder, not easier?
Is divorce worse than a bikini wax without a double
shot of vodka first?
Am I the only one whose life doesn’t contain smashed
avocado on sourdough toast for me to post filtered
photos of on Instagram, and pretend my life is prettier
than it is?

And . . . what the bloody hell has happened to the skin
above my knees?!

Who the heck am I now? Who is the person I live with?

IS ANY OF THIS NORMAL??!

It happened to me. It happened to all of my friends. It has probably
happened you. And this is why I like you already.

Following a comprehensive rummage through the
Rotting Salad Drawer of Midlife Parenting™ I have
discovered that all of this is entirely normal.

Despite the giant bullshit-carrot dangled in front of our
weary eyes during the crippling Early Years, willing us
to Keep Calm and Carry on Bum-wiping, our problems do NOT go
away when our children hit Secondary school; they just
become different.

Instead of nappies and sleepless nights we juggle A-
level options and puberty; relationship breakdowns
(theirs and our own) and unfathomable sadness;
teenage eye-rolls and 3-hour queues for the bathroom;
career catastrophes and a creeping, deepening sense
of loss as the little people we’ve been trying to get a
break from for fifteen years suddenly start to pull away
from us, and we realise we miss them terribly, and…

Jesus, is that CHIN HAIR??

Everybody goes through this. And yet nobody talks
about it. Which is weird. Because it happens to
everyone.
IT IS NOT. JUST. YOU.

This, my friend, is golden information. If they could
make watches or dental fillings out of it, they would.
Thus, this book is the opposite of a sickly how-to guide
to happiness, sexual fulfillment and Steely Buttocks
(which, incidentally, is the name of my band.)
I could write that, but I’d have to stab my eyeballs with
tweezers. Instead, it says,

‘Come here. Sit down. You are among friends. I, too,
have six pairs of dirty pants on my bedroom floor, half
a kilo of crumbed soggy granola bars in my bag and no
idea how to refill the dishwasher’s rinse aid without
YouTubing it.

I feel confused and sad sometimes. And scared.
And it’s all OK.’

Part diary through my own Midlife Shitstorm and part
tasty morsels of highly amusing and (possibly) helpful
notes about the Middle Years, you should see it as a
box of Valium, a night out with friends, and a good
shag in an airing cupboard. (Without shelving.)

So come! Let us stagger on together and laugh heartily
at all the things nothing but surgery and excessive
masturbation can cure.
When we’re done, come and see me in the Home.
Visiting hours are 2-4pm.
Please bring grapes, and porn.
I thank you.

Liz Fraser is one of the UK’s best-known writers and broadcasters on all aspects of modern family life, appearing almost daily on national TV and radio with much bigger hair than she has naturally.

Her internationally best-selling books about the realities of being a parent re-moulded parenting forever by finally allowing it to be funny, and accepting that we all get most of it wrong – which is just as it should be.
A columnist, social commentator Liz has three teenagers, last seen taking money out of her wallet and wearing her mascara.

She took Lifeshambles to the Edinburgh Fringe for a full run of one-woman stand-up shows, to critical acclaim by at least three people, one of whom was actually conscious at the time.

Liz has a degree in Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience from Cambridge University, and is the Director of Headcase, a multi-media platform to completely rebranding mental health issues faced by millions of normal people every day.

She has written for The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Red, Grazia, Glamour, The Daily Mail, Mother and Baby, Marie Claire, Junior, Woman, and many others.

And now she is writing this 4th book for YOU. You are welcome. “ @lizfraser LizFraser.com

These extracts were supposed to be short.

Turns out I’m really bad at short extracts. So here are some long ones, to
give you a flavour of the book.

If you like it, and want more, all you have to do is pledge.

It’s like shopping, only…IN THE FUTURE.

No really, it’s my pleasure.

LIVING IN LIMBO

Limbo was originally a place, not a back-breaking dance made popular by the
unexpectedly bendy Chubby Checker in 1962, and best performed at a party
after 12 tequila slammers and a bet.

This place, ‘Limbo’, derived from the Latin 'limbus', meaning either ‘no,
I’m fine thank you, I’ll just sit here and watch you all collapse under a
low stick’, or ‘edge’, was situated on the highly sought-after border
regions of Hell.

The Limbo Years, where we find ourselves the moment our children head off
to school to collect other people’s bad habits and nits, are exactly like
living on the borders of Hell, only without the perks.

On the home front I find I’m no longer wanted or needed on a
minute-to-minute ‘Help, Mummy, I have glitter in my nose’ level, because my
children have selfishly taken over my Primary Parenting Duties such as
putting food into their mouths, making sure they don’t drink bleach, and
discouraging them from mooning out of the front window when the postman
comes.

To add insult to redundancy, even though it’s almost impossible to get any
of my children to take a break from sending triple-chin selfies to their
mates on Snapchat long enough to talk to me, here, in actual real life 3-D,
I’m not free to go off and do my own thing. I’m still responsible for
looking after their wellbeing, dental emergencies, mysterious 24-hr
vomiting bugs and incessant emails from the school about trips I never knewv
they were going on.

And thus it is in these Middle Years;

Nobody wants us, but everyone wants us to stick around just in case they do.

It’s glorious.

I AM A TEENAGER’S WORST PARENT

There are 87 million Great Ironies of parenting. And that’s just the letter
A.

Number 7398 of the Great Ironies is that the worst people to parent
teenagers are the parents of teenagers.

Someone really should have thought that one through when designing the
whole Life Arc thing. It’s inexcusably poor.

[…]

We can’t possibly be of any use to our children at this stage of their lives, because our own are in such a bloody mess we can
barely get dressed without having a major existential crisis.

As a result, we make a god-awful pig’s ear of the whole thing.

It’s OK. It’s how it’s supposed to be. it’s just important to know this.
It’s not you, it’s…..you.

It's a GOOD time to be a writer.

Friday, 17 October 2014

I wrote this blog today, in the hope of inspiring any writers out there who are sitting at home, writing and writing, and struggling to get a book published, and feeling down about the Whole Damned Thing....to get out there, take control and DO IT.

This is just my story, of how I came to Unbound. There are thousands like it.

Hello.
Your video is spirited and fun. The subject of your book is one in which I want to invest. Hopefully, I followed the correct process for a pledge at Launch Party level. Unfortunately, unless I win the lottery, here in the U.S., I won't make the launch. Yet, please don't skimp on the booze. You can have my share. Best of luck with your project.
John Schoenbaum
Massachusetts USA

Dear John - my GOODNESS, I am so sorry not to have replied until now. I haven't checked in to my account for AGES, and I don't get notified when people write me messages. Or, if I do, then I didn't see it! Thank you so so much for your support, and your lovely words. You will be missed at the launch, but I'll have an extra glass (or two ;) ) for you. I hope you have received the update I just posted yesterday, to explain the...long silence, and please know that I am now back ON IT, and writing, and hope to finish the book soon. All best wishes to you in Massachusetts. Liz

Parenting of a Teenager, and the Menopause, a combo, that is also a great communication to point into your book, I have pledged lookforward to it I have an about to be teen girl and a 15 year old boy.....its those events like the first time your teen is drunk, dont get mad hug them and congratulate they contacted you to come and get them in a cab albeit they threw up

Hi Seonaid. Thank you so much for your pledge - and also this lovely message, with great ideas. Yep, parenting teens is absolutely core to the book, so it will all go in there. Doing while hitting the menopause is always extra fun. Who said it gets easier as they get older, eh?? Thank so VERY much again, and all best to you. Liz